4 months at it and I still can't stabilize an LD

[Whatsnext]

I hit my 20th LD this morning which for the first four months I think is not bad (?). The problem is I always fail to stabilize them. Save for my first LD which seemed to last forever, I haven't had any that were more than a few minutes long, usually 1-2 minutes. This morning when I became lucid I noticed one of my eyes was closed. So I opened it and my real eye actually opened and I found myself looking at my ceiling. And yes I did RC to rule out an FA. I've tried rubbing my hands a lot, focusing very hard on the sensations, but it doesn't help, nor does spinning or falling or eating something or licking the wall, et cetera. The best technique for me so far seems to be asking a DC to help me stay in the dream. But usually I can't find DCs quickly enough and even then I only get a few extra minutes out of the deal. I feel like I only LD when I'm on the cusp of waking up. I have never, not that I remember, at least, lost lucidity. My LDs invariably end with me waking up. Usually I can DEILD into another once per night, but that one's just as short and it usually doesn't work on the next try (like 3 minutes after the first DEILD). Also very often, but not always, I feel extremely tingly right after becoming lucid. It's a familiar sensation, it's what I feel in my limbs as I'm drifting off to sleep, but in LDs it's through my whole body. I believe that is my brain reconnecting with my body's tactile senses which basically just serve up a bunch of static because they are paralyzed. I am good at suppressing my emotions when I become lucid so I do not believe it is an excitement problem. Gimme some ideas folks, because I'm running out of them

[sisyphus]

If your lucid dreams mostly occur near your normal waking time, then there's a limit to how long you can extend them. Your body is ready to wake up and you can't do much about it. My suggestion would be to try to induce lucid dreams earlier in the night. Ideally, you would wake naturally after 4-5 hours of sleep. This is the ideal time for WBTB, WILD, MILD, SSILD, and so on. But if your lucid dreams come at 7.5+ hours of sleep, they will often be short and weak.

[AnotherDreamer]

I have been through the stabilization journey. I don't completely understand why stabilization techniques work sometimes and other times they don't. I have noticed a pattern in my own dreams though. When I try to stabilize, it works best when I lose myself in the stabilization and drop every thought or worry that I had before I started stabilizing. The main technique that I use now, I learned from Sivason. I look at things when I notice the dream starts to fade away. I'll get right up to some object and look at it as it becomes more and more detailed, until I am content with the level of detail and then I'll go back to the dream as though nothing happened. I used this about 5 times last night to make one dream last almost an hour (I had slept for about 8-9 hours when I started the LD). I was really struggling with stabilization about a month ago, I know how much it can suck when nothing seems to work anymore. It was as though the very struggle with stabilizing weakened all of my stabilization attempts. That makes me suspect that stabilizing is just like any other dream control technique, it depends on your confidence in your ability. Once I grew more confident in what I could do, and in what I was doing, the stabilization problems went away. I'm sure that's not very helpful, but I really do hope that you find a solid way to stabilize that consistently works for you. Maybe ask a dream character or a dream guide what to do to stabilize?